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1941

post #1 of 35
8/27/09 at 12:14pm
Thread Starter 
There's no denying it's a total mess of a movie and that Spielberg could have easily been destroyed by its failure. Thank God, he was already working with Lucas on Raiders. But dammit if I'm not a fan of the sheer insanity of 1941.

The opening Jaws send-up, Robert Stack's General Stillwell and his obsession with Dumbo, Nancy Allen's airplane fetish (and Tim Matheson's ill-fated attempt to take advantage of it), the fact that there's a film that exists where Slim Pickens, Toshiro Mifune and Christopher Lee share a scene speaking in different languages and Belushi's Wild Bill Kelso.

Any fans...?
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post #2 of 35
8/27/09 at 12:20pm
"OK, Dad, but you're ruining Christmas!"

Yeah, it's a complete fucking mess, but never fails to crack me up. I love Eddie Deezen and his dummy on the ferris wheel.
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post #3 of 35
8/27/09 at 12:24pm
It's insane, but it's not very FUN or FUNNY. It's trying to hard to achieve a certain level of wacky zaniness (ala 'It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World'), but it quickly dissolves into a loud and chaotic mess. The opening riff on 'Jaws' and the Matheson/Allen plane sequence are really the only two moments that work for me.

It was a good learning experience for Spielberg; he learned was EXCESS was.
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post #4 of 35
8/27/09 at 12:27pm
The It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World comparison is very apt -- both films confuse zany for funny, and while I enjoy both films, they can both be wearying at times from all the excess.

But the model work is spectacular throughout, especially during the Hollywood dogfight. And John Williams' score is appropriately over the top gung ho brilliance.
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post #5 of 35
8/27/09 at 12:38pm
I have to agree with Judas, it's not really funny. Except for the Japanesse guy screaming "HOLLYWOOD!" and Belushi shooting the radio.

It almost seems like it was the Southland Tales of its day.
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post #6 of 35
8/27/09 at 1:22pm
I love, love, love this movie. There, I said it. It's loud, often obnoxious and surprisingly crude for Spielberg, but I enjoy every minute of it. I put the USO fight/dance sequence up there high on the list of Spielberg's top 10 best moments. It's also my favorite John Williams score outside of SW or Raiders. How the main theme isn't used by every football team in America is a mystery to me.

WANT the theatrical cut on DVD, please. The expanded edition futzes with the pacing and includes some stuff that was better left on the editing room floor. I'm probably alone on this, but I find it much more rewatchable than a lot of his "better" movies.
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post #7 of 35
8/27/09 at 2:01pm
I agree with Ratty. A great cast of characters, a satirical look at the beginning of the US involvement with WWII, and a superb cast.
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post #8 of 35
8/27/09 at 2:08pm
FilmNerdJamie, 1941 is my favorite Steven Spielberg film, outside of the...Indiana Jones Series, so that puts it at...#4. 1941 is hilarious, I do not understand how people couldn't...Love it. After Animal House, it is my fave film starring John Belushi. Tim Matheson is terrific, and the opening song puts me...In The Mood for this fun flick, every time.
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post #9 of 35
8/27/09 at 2:08pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Judas Booth View Post
It's insane, but it's not very FUN or FUNNY. It's trying to hard to achieve a certain level of wacky zaniness (ala 'It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World'), but it quickly dissolves into a loud and chaotic mess. The opening riff on 'Jaws' and the Matheson/Allen plane sequence are really the only two moments that work for me.

It was a good learning experience for Spielberg; he learned was EXCESS was.
My thoughts exactly. I also believe that it would have been thought of much better were it not the black sheep of one of the most legendary runs by a director ever.
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post #10 of 35
8/27/09 at 2:21pm
I remember 1941 being the start of Starlog Magazine's grudge against Spielberg. They promoted the film heavily with special edition magazines and merchandise and took a bath when the film tanked. Then when ET was getting ready to come out, they wanted to run pics of the title character but Spielberg asked them not to, to preserve the surprise of seeing him for the first time. Then ET appeared on the cover of People a couple of weeks later and Starlog went ballistic. Had a big editorial talking about how they got hosed first by 1941 and then with ET. They were less than pleased with him for a while.
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post #11 of 35
8/27/09 at 7:55pm
Whatever the film can be blamed and lambasted for, it contains a brilliant, Zucker-esque gag in a tank rolling through a paint factory and then through a turpentine factory and emerging pristine.
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post #12 of 35
8/28/09 at 2:40am
I'm a fan. It's messy, but so what? I love the kind of comedies that throw everything against the wall to see what sticks. Not everything sticks, but most of it does and even when it doesn't I'm still grinning from the scene before. I think it has a bad reputation of being a bad movie because it bombed. But it's not a bad movie.
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post #13 of 35
8/28/09 at 4:27am
It IS a bad movie, albeit one that you can have some fun with. Like that douchebag you kinda hung out with in college; you more than kind of thought he was an awful person but once someone busted out a keg he knew how to party. I honestly don't even think Spielberg knew what the fuck was going on with this movie when he was shooting it, and instead just focused on making the few bits that do work work very well; everything else is just obnoxious.

I will admit the cut from Mifune describing his men's prowess at disguising themselves to a bunch of pine trees walking down a road slayed me. But this really felt like Spielberg trying to ape John Landis, and failing miserably.
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post #14 of 35
8/28/09 at 4:57am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ratty View Post
I love, love, love this movie. There, I said it. It's loud, often obnoxious and surprisingly crude for Spielberg, but I enjoy every minute of it. I put the USO fight/dance sequence up there high on the list of Spielberg's top 10 best moments. It's also my favorite John Williams score outside of SW or Raiders. How the main theme isn't used by every football team in America is a mystery to me.

WANT the theatrical cut on DVD, please. The expanded edition futzes with the pacing and includes some stuff that was better left on the editing room floor. I'm probably alone on this, but I find it much more rewatchable than a lot of his "better" movies.
Couldn't have said it better myself. Totally agree on all counts, especially about the theatrical cut being superior to the expanded edition.

I watched this film all the time as a kid when it played on Z Channel here in L.A. and never got enough. It was a live action cartoon on an epic scale. And I completely reject the notion that this is a bad movie. It's an out of control movie. It's an over-indulgent movie. But there's too much talent on display in every department to call it a bad movie, no matter how much of a mess it might be.

I shudder to think of the huge mountains of blow that were inhaled during the making of this film.
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post #15 of 35
8/28/09 at 5:12am
There's actually so much good going here in this mess.

The USO fight properly rips off the music from the epic fight scene in The Quiet Man, Eddie Deezen, Warren Oates on fire, the fact that Belushi and Ayckroyd have the tiniest of scenes together, wild madcap comedy past its time.

My only misgiving: Slim Pickens as Hollis Wood should have really been Harry Wood to play up further on bad but sometimes funny stereotypes concerning mispronunciation.
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post #16 of 35
8/28/09 at 7:02am
Watching the Doc on the DVD the film only seems funny to 3 people. Gale/Zemeckis and Spielberg and that's about right.

It's a fascinating failure. Though the gag with John Milius as a gun toting Santa Clause is great. Also, the AVClub' random roles has a section on this with Tim Matheson...

Quote:
1941 (1979)—“Captain Loomis Birkhead”

TM: It had a lot of us Animal House guys in it. And working with Spielberg, how bad could it be? [Laughs.] But it was one of those excessively big movies where every action scene was done and re-done and re-done again. It was so overproduced and overly expensive. And it wasn’t terribly funny. I must say Steven was great to me, and I loved working with him. He called me up on the phone and was like, “I want you to be in this movie. There are a couple of parts. You can take whichever one you want. One of them is a main character who is involved in everything, and there’s another character who has his own storyline and goes off on his own. He’s probably the funnier, more unique character.” I said, “Well let me do that second one.”

When we started shooting and I read the script, I realized “They could cut this part out in a second.” But he’s great. Steven’s one of the most visually talented and character-oriented directors I’ve ever worked with. And I learn from him every time I watch one of his movies. Good or bad—and he has made some awful movies—they’re never uninteresting. He’s made four or five of the greatest movies of all time. Perfect movies, like E.T. or Schindler’s List or Saving Private Ryan. I also think Duel is perfect for a television movie. I liked Munich a lot too. So whenever I study a genre of filmmaking, he’s the first guy I go to. Even Catch Me If You Can, which is a very lightweight kind of thing, if you just look at the economy of the way he designs his shots and works around actors, the craft is amazing.

AVC: Had you ever worked with him in his TV days?

TM: No. I was under contract with Universal at the same time, but we never met. I did a Night Gallery, but not with him. I wish I had.

AVC: You mentioned 1941 not quite being as funny as you’d hoped. Can you tell that sort of thing when you’re still in the filmmaking phase? Or are there times when you’re shooting where you think the movie’s going to be hilarious, but then you see it on the screen and it just doesn’t work?

TM: I think you could tell with 1941. It was never on the page. I read Animal House and I said, “I will burn down a house to be in this. I have to be in this movie.” I read 1941 and I went, “Well, if Steven likes it…” [Laughs.] But it just wasn’t on the page. It was a very big, unwieldy thing, and there were so many characters. It was fun to shoot, but I didn’t know what the core of it was. The core of Animal House was about prejudice, about equality, and about inclusion/exclusion. It was about a group of people who were together and anything went. Anybody who wanted in could get it in. Then there was that other group that nobody could get in, unless they were white, and just alike. It was very representative of the culture in the ‘60s, ‘50s, and ‘40s in America. So at heart it was about some very deep things, even though superficially it was about hijinks and fun and college and rebellion. But I never knew what 1941 was about. What’s the human story that all these characters have in common? To me, as a director and an actor, that’s the main thing. “What’s the heart of this story? What’s the humanity of this story? And if the movie doesn’t have it, then why am I watching it?” Even if it’s a silly comedy, like Superbad or Knocked Up—Judd Apatow, I love, because he’s all about heart. The humor comes out of the humanity. With 1941, I kept looking for the heart and humanity in my character. I mean, I know he just wants to get laid, but what’s the twist on that? Does he fall in love? What’s the extra beat there that makes everyone in the audience go, “Aw, I really loved that”?
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post #17 of 35
8/28/09 at 10:33am
Thread Starter 
I just love the fact that both John Wayne and Chuck Heston were offended by the script.
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post #18 of 35
8/28/09 at 11:11am
According to Wikipedia, John Wayne called Spielberg saying he wouldn't do it because he was very ill and because the script was unpatriotic.
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post #19 of 35
8/28/09 at 11:22am
I would dearly love to see Gale & Zemeckis do a similarly huge and out-of-control comedy about the War on Terror.
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post #20 of 35
8/28/09 at 11:32am
Thread Starter 
Wayne being sick I get. Hell, who wouldn't?

I thought it was amusing that he found the script unpatriotic (really?) and historically inaccurate. As one of the above posters mentioned, it's the closest thing to a live-action cartoon we'll ever get. Also interesting how I've never heard anyone mention the film's actual lead Bobby Di Cicco.
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post #21 of 35
8/28/09 at 11:46am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ratty View Post
I would dearly love to see Gale & Zemeckis do a similarly huge and out-of-control comedy about the War on Terror.
You damn well know if Zemeckis did it. It would be motion capture.

And we sort of got that with In The Loop.

And as for a live action cartoon? Used Cars, 'nuff said.
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post #22 of 35
8/28/09 at 11:55am
Thread Starter 
Both 1941 and Used Cars of course came from the minds of Gale/Zemeckis. Ironic that both "live action cartoons" were failures considering Bob Z's later success with Roger Rabbit.
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post #23 of 35
8/28/09 at 2:41pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by EdHocken View Post
And we sort of got that with In The Loop.
In The Loop's entire budget would barely cover Belushi's coke habit on 1941.
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post #24 of 35
8/28/09 at 2:42pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ratty View Post
In The Loop's entire budget would barely cover Belushi's coke habit on 1941.
That line is Signature-worthy.
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post #25 of 35
8/10/10 at 11:02am
I tried watching this again last night and simply couldn't make it past the 1 hour mark without turning it off. It's almost offensive in its utter and complete lack of comedy. I really think that the only way that this film would have worked would have been to shoot for an R rating and just let the SNL and SCTV cast go nuts...'Animal House' it up a bit.
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post #26 of 35
8/10/10 at 11:39am
I think I was at the perfect age when I saw 1941 the first time. I think I was about 13 and saw it on cable. And I watched it over and over, almost every time it played. It had big pyrotechnics and special effects. It had a bit of naughty PG sexuality going on. It had a huge, loud cast who yelled and screamed a lot. And it had one of the biggest, most energetic John Williams scores ever composed. It might not have been incredibly funny but it was certainly over-the-top silly. And silly, under the right circumstances, can be entertaining.

I find 1941 to be a lower-than-low brow masterpiece. There's a tremendous amount of talent on display in the service of epic stupidity. And I've got no problem with that.
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post #27 of 35
8/10/10 at 12:24pm
I was the same age when I saw it, Litmus. It was one of the first films to come on HBO when we first got it and I watched the crap out of it.

You can fault the script, but you certainly can't fault the enthusiasm. Everyone's giving it their all.

1941 was also the first US production to use the Louma crane, so it's somewhat significant historically speaking.
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post #28 of 35
8/10/10 at 1:16pm
Jesus, in 20 years people will be praising REVENGE OF THE FALLEN as an unappreciated classic. This movie is a sprawling turd, and always has been.
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post #29 of 35
8/10/10 at 2:14pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard Dickson View Post
1941 was also the first US production to use the Louma crane, so it's somewhat significant historically speaking.
It's probably the highwater mark for old-school miniatures, too.
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post #30 of 35
8/10/10 at 2:39pm
The only reason I have the DVD is because of the isolated score and the awesome teaser trailer. That, and it was $6. I don't believe that I've watched the whole thing yet.

I'd be willing to give the theatrical cut a chance, though.
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post #31 of 35
8/10/10 at 3:39pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ratty View Post
It's probably the highwater mark for old-school miniatures, too.
Yeah, they gave Toho a run for their money with some of those models.
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post #32 of 35
8/11/10 at 8:11pm
They doing comedy right is very hard...I bet Steven believes them now.Treat Williams' egg thing always bothered me, and the airplane fetish too. Something about the film is watchable though.
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post #33 of 35
8/11/10 at 9:33pm
Lisey's DEATH, Not only does, 1941 feature a rousing John Williams Score, there are top flight performances by the cast including...John Belushi, Tim Matheson, Lovely Nancy Allen, over the top zanyness, that would fit as a double feature with...It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World. 1941 is my favorite Spielberg film, after, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom, and Indiana Jones and The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull!
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post #34 of 35
8/12/10 at 5:22pm
It's worth watching just once for the scene where Warren Oates and Belushi try to out crazy the other.
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post #35 of 35
8/12/10 at 7:15pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cruikshank View Post
It's worth watching just once for the scene where Warren Oates and Belushi try to out crazy the other.
To a blazing John Williams score, no less!
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